Jews and Words

Jews and Words PDF Author: Amos Oz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
DIV Why are words so important to so many Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism’s most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, compose the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation. Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly female author of the Song of Songs through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals but rather on written words and an ongoing debate between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humor, Jews and Words offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the conversation. /div

Jews and Words

Jews and Words PDF Author: Amos Oz
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300156774
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 244

Get Book Here

Book Description
DIV Why are words so important to so many Jews? Novelist Amos Oz and historian Fania Oz-Salzberger roam the gamut of Jewish history to explain the integral relationship of Jews and words. Through a blend of storytelling and scholarship, conversation and argument, father and daughter tell the tales behind Judaism’s most enduring names, adages, disputes, texts, and quips. These words, they argue, compose the chain connecting Abraham with the Jews of every subsequent generation. Framing the discussion within such topics as continuity, women, timelessness, and individualism, Oz and Oz-Salzberger deftly engage Jewish personalities across the ages, from the unnamed, possibly female author of the Song of Songs through obscure Talmudists to contemporary writers. They suggest that Jewish continuity, even Jewish uniqueness, depends not on central places, monuments, heroic personalities, or rituals but rather on written words and an ongoing debate between the generations. Full of learning, lyricism, and humor, Jews and Words offers an extraordinary tour of the words at the heart of Jewish culture and extends a hand to the reader, any reader, to join the conversation. /div

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1 PDF Author: Jeffrey H. Tigay
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300135505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
The Posen Library's groundbreaking anthology series—called "a feast of Jewish culture, in ten volumes" by The Chronicle of Higher Education—offers with Volume 1 an exploration of the culture of ancient Israel, including its literature, legal documents, and visual arts "Readers seeking primary texts, documents, images, and artifacts constituting Jewish culture and civilization will not be disappointed. More important, they might even be inspired. . . . This set will serve to improve teaching and research in Jewish studies at institutions of higher learning and, at the same time, promote, maintain, and improve understanding of the Jewish population and Judaism in general."—Booklist, Starred Review The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 1, covers the earliest period of Jewish civilization, from the second millennium BCE through 332 BCE. Organized by genre, this book presents a collection of some of the earliest products of Jewish culture, including extensive selections from the Tanakh and the Hebrew Bible; extrabiblical inscriptions and documents by and about Israelites and Jews, found by archaeologists in the lands of Israel, Egypt, and Mesopotamia; and images representing the visual culture of ancient Israel. Combining genres that have never been presented together in a single publication, Volume 1 illustrates ancient Israel’s cultural innovations and commonalities with neighboring societies.

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 9

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 9 PDF Author: Samuel D. Kassow
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300188536
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1088

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Book Description
The Posen Library’s groundbreaking anthology series—called “a feast of Jewish culture, in ten volumes” by the Chronicle of Higher Education—explores in Volume 9 global Jewish responses to the years 1939 to 1973, a time of unprecedented destruction, dislocation, agency, and creativity “An extensive look at Jewish civilization and culture from the eve of World War II to the Yom Kippur War . . . It’s a weighty collection, to be sure, but one that’s consistently engaging . . . An edifying and diverse survey of 20th-century Jewish life.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review “Readers seeking primary texts, documents, images, and artifacts constituting Jewish culture and civilization will not be disappointed. More important, they might even be inspired. . . . This set will serve to improve teaching and research in Jewish studies at institutions of higher learning and, at the same time, promote, maintain, and improve understanding of the Jewish population and Judaism in general.”—Booklist, starred review The ninth volume of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization covers the years 1939 to 1973, a period that editors Kassow and Roskies call “one of the most tragic and dramatic in Jewish history.” Organized geographically and then by genre, this book details Jewish cultural and intellectual resources throughout this era, particularly in political thought, literature, the visual and performing arts, and religion. This volume explores worldwide Jewish perceptions of momentous events that transpired in the mid‑twentieth century and how Jews redefined themselves across regions throughout an era rife with tragedy, displacement, and dispersion. The breadth and depth of this work goes beyond any comparable collection, with detailed insights and sharp focus to accompany its breathtaking scope. A major, ten‑volume anthology project more than a decade in the making, the Posen Library is an ideal reference tool for scholars, teachers, and students at all levels.

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 6 PDF Author: Elisheva Carlebach
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030019000X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 600

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Book Description
A landmark project to collect, translate, and transmit primary material from a momentous period in Jewish culture and civilization, this volume covers what Elisheva Carlebach describes as a period "in which every aspect of Jewish life underwent the most profound changes to have occurred since antiquity." Organized by genre, this extensive yet accessible volume surveys Jewish cultural production and intellectual innovation during these dramatic years, particularly in literature, the visual and performing arts, and intellectual culture. The wide-ranging collection includes a diverse selection of sources created by Jews around the world, translated from a dozen languages. Representing a tumultuous time of changing borders, demographic shifts, and significant Jewish migration, this anthology explores the range of approaches of Jews, from welcoming to resistant, to the intertwining ideals of enlightenment and emancipation, "the very foundation of the Jewish experience in this period."

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 5

The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 5 PDF Author: Posen Library of Jewish culture and civilization (Lucerne, Switzerland)
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300135513
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1392

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Book Description
The fifth volume of the Posen Library demonstrates through a rich array of texts and images the extraordinary diversity of Jewish life during the early modern period "A rich and varied gateway into the primary source material of early modern Jewish history that is very strong on geographical diversity. A magnificent achievement."--Adam Sutcliffe, King's College London The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, Volume 5, covering the early modern period (1500-1750), presents a variety of Jewish texts to demonstrate the diversity of Jewish culture and life. These texts originate from Eastern and Western Europe, the Americas, the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, Kurdistan, Persia, Yemen, India--in short, a worldwide diaspora. They embrace historical writing and religious scholarship, liturgical expression and economic records, ethics and personal devotion, correspondence and communal regulations, art and music, architecture and poetry. The simultaneous centrifugal and centripetal character of Jewish communities during this era illustrates the distinctiveness of the early modern period in Jewish history and informs developments in world history at large. Including texts written by women, a robust collection of images, and extensive material not previously accessible to English-language readers, this volume is rich, deep, and enlightening.

The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture

The Geonim of Babylonia and the Shaping of Medieval Jewish Culture PDF Author: Robert Brody
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 9780300070477
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
The Geonic period from about the late sixth to mid-eleventh centuries is of crucial importance in the history of Judaism. The Geonim, for whom this era is named, were the heads of the ancient talmudic academies of Babylonia. They gained ascendancy over the older Palestinian center of Judaism and were recognized as the leading religious and spiritual authorities by most of the world's Jewish population. The Geonim and their circles enshrined the Babylonian Talmud as the central canonical work of rabbinic literature and the leading guide to religious practice, and it was a predominantly Babylonian version of Judaism that was transplanted to newer centers of Judaism in North Africa and Europe. Robert Brody's book -- the first survey in English of the Geonic period in almost a century -focuses on the cultural milieu of the Geonim and on their intellectual and literary creativity. Brody describes the cultural spheres in which the Geonim were active and the historical and cultural settings within which they functioned. He emphasizes the challenges presented by other Jewish institutions and individuals, ranging from those within the Babylonian Jewish setting -- specially the political leadership represented by the Exilarch -- to the competing Palestinian Jewish center and to sectarian movements and freethinkers who rejected rabbinic authority altogether. He also describes the variety of ways in which the development of Geonic tradition was affected by the surrounding non-Jewish cultures, both Muslim and Christian. "This book is a fresh and thorough examination of the period in question, a masterpiece of scholarship and erudition". -- Neil Danzig, Jewish Theological Seminary

Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto

Voices from the Warsaw Ghetto PDF Author: David G. Roskies
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300245351
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
The powerful writings and art of Jews living in the Warsaw Ghetto Hidden in metal containers and buried underground during World War II, these works from the Warsaw Ghetto record the Holocaust from the perspective of its first interpreters, the victims themselves. Gathered clandestinely by an underground ghetto collective called Oyneg Shabes, the collection of reportage, diaries, prose, artwork, poems, jokes, and sermons captures the heroism, tragedy, humor, and social dynamics of the ghetto. Miraculously surviving the devastation of war, this extraordinary archive encompasses a vast range of voices—young and old, men and women, the pious and the secular, optimists and pessimists—and chronicles different perspectives on the topics of the day while also preserving rapidly endangered cultural traditions. Described by David G. Roskies as “a civilization responding to its own destruction,” these texts tell the story of the Warsaw Ghetto in real time, against time, and for all time.

Between Friends

Between Friends PDF Author: Amos Oz
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547985592
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
Winner of the National Jewish Book Award: A “gorgeous, rueful collection of eight linked stories” capturing the collective dreams of Israel in the 1950s (Chicago Tribune). These eight interconnected stories, set in the fictitious Kibbutz Yekhat, draw masterful profiles of idealistic men and women enduring personal hardships in the shadow of one of the greatest collective dreams of the twentieth century. A devoted father who fails to challenge his daughter’s lover, an old friend, a man his own age; an elderly gardener who carries on his shoulders the sorrows of the world; a woman writing perversely poignant letters to her husband’s mistress. Each of these stories is a luminous human and literary study; together they offer an eloquent portrait of an idea, and of a charged and fascinating epoch. Award-winning writer Amos Oz, who spent three decades living on a kibbutz, is at home and at his best in this “lucid and heartbreaking” award-winning collection (The Guardian). “Oz lifts the veil on kibbutz existence without palaver. His pinpoint descriptions are pared to perfection . . . His people twitch with life.” —The Scotsman “A collection of stories . . . that boasts the sense, scope and unity of a novel . . . Breathtaking.” —Irish Examiner “A complex and melancholic vision of people struggling to transcend their individuality for the sake of mundanely idealist goals.” —The Times Literary Supplement

A Promise at Sobibór

A Promise at Sobibór PDF Author: Philip “Fiszel” Bialowitz
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299248038
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
A Promise at Sobibór is the story of Fiszel Bialowitz, a teenaged Polish Jew who escaped the Nazi gas chambers. Between April 1942 and October 1943, about 250,000 Jews from European countries and the Soviet Union were sent to the Nazi death camp at Sobibór in occupied Poland. Sobibór was not a transit camp or work camp: its sole purpose was efficient mass murder. On October 14, 1943, approximately half of the 650 or so prisoners still alive at Sobibór undertook a daring and precisely planned revolt, killing SS officers and fleeing through minefields and machine-gun fire into the surrounding forests, farms, and towns. Only about forty-two of them, including Fiszel, are known to have survived to the end of the war. Philip (Fiszel) Bialowitz, now an American citizen, tells his eyewitness story here in the real-time perspective of his own boyhood, from his childhood before the war and his internment in the brutal Izbica ghetto to his harrowing six months at Sobibór—including his involvement in the revolt and desperate mass escape—and his rescue by courageous Polish farmers. He also recounts the challenges of life following the war as a teenaged displaced person, and his eventual efforts as a witness to the truth of the Holocaust. In 1943 the heroic leaders of the revolt at Sobibór, Sasha Perchersky and Leon Feldhendler, implored fellow prisoners to promise that anyone who survived would tell the story of Sobibór: not just of the horrific atrocities committed there, but of the courage and humanity of those who fought back. Bialowitz has kept that promise. Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association for School Libraries Best Books for High Schools, selected by the American Association for School Libraries Best Books for Special Interests, selected by the Public Library Association

Prince of the Press

Prince of the Press PDF Author: Joshua Teplitsky
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300234902
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
David Oppenheim (1664-1736), chief rabbi of Prague in the early eighteenth century, built an unparalleled collection of Jewish books and manuscripts, all of which have survived and are housed in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. His remarkable collection testifies to the myriad connections Jews maintained with each other across political borders, and the contacts between Christians and Jews that books facilitated. From contact with the great courts of European nobility to the poor of Jerusalem, his family ties brought him into networks of power, prestige, and opportunity that extended across Europe and the Mediterranean basin. Containing works of law and literature alongside prayer and poetry, his library served rabbinic scholars and communal leaders, introduced old books to new readers, and functioned as a unique source of personal authority that gained him fame throughout Jewish society and beyond. The story of his life and library brings together culture, commerce, and politics, all filtered through this extraordinary collection. Based on the careful reconstruction of an archive that is still visited by scholars today, Joshua Teplitsky's book offers a window into the social life of Jewish books in early modern Europe.--Publisher's website.